I beg."

"You see a Reb has just been brought in crazy with typhoid; a bad case
every way; a drunken, rascally little captain somebody took the trouble
to capture, but whom nobody wants to take the trouble to cure. The wards
are full, the ladies worked to death, and willing to be for our own
boys, but rather slow to risk their lives for a Reb. Now you've had the
fever, you like queer patients, your mate will see to your ward for a
while, and I will find you a good attendant. The fellow won't last long,
I fancy; but he can't die without some sort of care, you know. I've put
him in the fourth story of the west wing, away from the rest. It is
airy, quiet, and comfortable there. I'm on that ward, and will do my
best for you in every way. Now, then, will you go?"

"Of course I will, out of perversity, if not common charity; for some of
these people think that because I'm an abolitionist I am also a heathen,
and I should rather like to show them, that, though I cannot quite love
my enemies, I am willing to take care of them."

"Very good; I thought you'd go; and speaking of abolition reminds me
that you can have a contraband for servant, if you like. It is that fine
mulatto fellow who was found burying his Rebel master after the fight,
and, being badly cut over the head, our boys brought him along. Will you
have him?"

"By all means,--for I'll stand to my guns on that point, as on the
other; these black boys are far more faithful and handy than some of the
white scamps given me to serve, instead of being served by. But is this
man well enough?"

"Yes, for that sort of work, and I think you'll like him. He must have
been a handsome fellow before he got his face slashed; not much darker
than myself; his master's son, I dare say, and the white blood makes him
rather high and haughty about some things. He was in a bad way when he
came in, but vowed he'd die in the street rather than turn in with the
black fellows below; so I put him up in the west wing, to be out of the
way, and he's seen to the captain all the morning. "When can you go up?"

"As soon as Tom is laid out, Skinner moved, Haywood washed, Marble
dressed, Charley rubbed, Downs taken up, Upham laid down, and the whole
forty fed."

We both laughed, though the Doctor was on his way to the dead-house and
I held a shroud on my lap. But in a hospital one learns that
cheerfulness is one's salvation; for, in an atmosphere of suffering and
death, heaviness of heart wo